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Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain Technologies (DC-Blockchain)

The rapid emergence of blockchain technologies, often compared to the rise of the early Internet, presents revolutionary opportunities and challenges to the future of modern society as we face the 21st century world of ubiquitous connectivity, decentralized networks and interconnected devices. At its core, the emergence of blockchain technologies represents the possibility of decentralized immutable records, where tokenization and zeroknowledge proofs offer the transformative potential for P2Pbased economic and social coordination, granular control of identity, reputation and data, disintermediation of third party intermediaries and central authorities, and new opportunities for enhanced governance and participatory networks. Yet, in the first few years of these nascent technologies, the public and political discourse surrounding these technologies have been colored by private economic interests and journalistic sensationalism. The fundamental lack of understanding of these technologies has impaired exploration, innovation and deployment at unacceptable cost to society.

The blockchain discussion is gaining great political momentum as it lies at the very nexus of the core issues we face in the 21st century: Internet policy (identity, trust, reputation, privacy and security), the Internet of Things (and corresponding implications for responsive architecture, smart cities, selforganizing and autonomous entities), government and corporate accountability, challenges to traditional oversight mechanisms and the adaptation of legal paradigms to distributed architecture, emergent monetary/economic policy and challenges to loss of sovereignty of central banks, financial inclusion and fair access for the developing world, new metrics of value for information economies that transcend GDP measures of market growth, deployment of P2P commonsbased production, and local coordination and scalable development of new social and incentive structures. Indeed, many legislators around the globe are currently scrutinising the opportunity to elaborate and adopt legislation on blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Stellar and Ethereum. In view of the confusion and sheer complexity surrounding the various ways to approach these multifaceted, multidisciplinary technologies, it is vitally important to address blockchain policy issues through a multistakeholder approach.

The goal of the Dynamic Coalition will be to educate, inform and disseminate information on current trends and policy developments with regard to blockchain development and regulation. Ultimately, the Dynamic Coalition will attempt to elaborate a “model framework” on blockchain technologies, including: (1) application of existing legal and oversight regimes to financial applications of blockchain; (2) smart contracts or selfexecuting transactions and interactions between humans and machines or between multiple entities which are automatically enforced by the underlying code of the technology; and (3) decentralized autonomous organizations that offer new forms of participatory governance and economic activity. Critically, the Dynamic Coalition seeks to create model rules consistent with international law standards and that could potentially be adopted in different jurisdictions worldwide.

The purpose of this Dynamic Coalition is, therefore, to provide a global discussion arena aimed at scrutinising the various nuances of blockchain technologies so as to ultimately contribute to the elaboration of best practices, policies and regulations.

To do so, the Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain will provide a common platform involving a large variety of stakeholders in a joint analysis of the blockchain debate. Beyond the website (http://www.coala.global) which will provide the basic information on the work done by the Dynamic Coalition (e .g ., content from workshops and conference, articles, publications or blog posts drafted by individual members of the coalition, output from working groups), a mailing list will allow all members of the Dynamic Coalition to discuss these issues in an open and interactive fashion.

Furthermore, an annual report will also be produced to provide an overview on blockchain technology developments, policies and draft legislations. This report will encompass a selection of articles and analyses on blockchain and will be presented and discussed during the annual meeting of the Dynamic Coalition within the framework of the IGF. By way of background, the idea of a Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain was presented during a series of workshops and conferences held at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford this year. These workshops were organised as a global, collaborative multistakeholder initiative between leading academic and research universities and subject matter experts within diverse sectors and disciplines, including lawyers, economists, designers, cryptographers, and protocol architects. As our work grew in scope, members, and audience, we began to work with other stakeholders such as central banks, policymakers, and entrepreneurs. Many of the stakeholders involved in these workshops have expressly manifested their interest in the coalition and have already submitted material to contribute to the work that will be undertaken by the Dynamic Coalition.